


The Transparency of Bark

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Incoming Psychogenic Fugue, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The town lays bare, its rings exposed. It is no mirror anymore.<br/>Splintered shards of Sheriff Truman after the death that breaks him, through doubles and smoke screens and, always, the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Transparency of Bark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amand_r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/gifts).



 

**1\. The Place of Transit**

_Shake your head in denial, there is no-one left to convince_

 

 

A veil of velvet on one side; on the other, the lacquered veining of wood. Fiber by fiber opposite ridge by ridge, and she is hard and glass and reflective surface, she is focus, she is stuck in the middle, a go-between. She possesses, she realizes, the softness that wood lacks and the edge the fabric envies – she could disappear in this contrast, shift to join them both and blur away as the Great Northern fades to red, and what a final rest that would be. At peace, having filled the world with what it wanted of her. Thin air.

But with her every thought throbbing through her, shards carve at her ribs, draw blood and remind her that she is still fractured. Back there, in the wood, around the polished roundness of a knob and the planks and trunk-columns, life continues, while on this side, her eyes are transfixed by the shuffling of heavy curtains. Revealing secrets. Unto each other. She finds no end to symmetry, no key to this still riddle she can discern.

 

A milky shadow at the fringe of her field of vision does not leave its guard post. There is a future circling in the wait.

 

Is it her, is it one her, of the many persons she has been? She may be an empty weightless image, but not a shadow. Not yet a shadow. A shadow no longer. Gripping the shards, twisting, creaking, ruffling, Josie Packard turns around.

Velvet tickles her naked feet now; under her nails, wood. Lights. Chandeliers of bone and glass and, under them, the flickering fires of guests walking in and out. Josie wished to find some comfort in the warmth of that faraway life, in observing the anonimity of the comings and goings of the hotel lobby without being forced to serve a purpose nor to find her shape in it, but Josie has looked through too many opened curtains to still see people as made of flesh instead of burning with the sum of their symbols, and the small crowd goes up in smoke.

 

Two mirrors remain, motionless, in the middle of the room.

 

Josie already knows that she will see herself in the frail, elegant, square-jawed dark-haired stranger that some foul play brought into town and that the town is swallowing whole, in how he looks anywhere but at the prints left on him by others, older, more powerful, and in the acute pain and longing he is spreading in his wake. Old news. Now she sees with clarity the trail of fire that follows him and the shadows lingering beneath the ring he wears on his little finger, and she can afford the magnanimity of granting him some measure of pity.

But the other was never a mirror before. Twin Peaks' Sheriff is curled on a chair by the Great Northern's fireplace and he is crying, gross tears and sobs and broken whimpers that _this is not fair._ Josie could never imagine him showing a helpless side, that was her job, as his was to console her and thus prove his worth. Now it's up to the agent to struggle for words, but in her past and in his future, Josie sees that he will not find them. Harry is split to his core. The side of him that loved without asking, offering his trust on the same plate as a stack of doughnuts, is charred and will not sprout again, he is not whole anymore. It's her distant past playing in front of her eyes on someone else's skin and Josie swears that she did not want this, that she had no choice she was forced, would he believe her, and she reaches out toward Harry and calls for him, but wood has no voice. Cooper looks up, cocking his head, as do one receptionist and two guests. Her apology falls short of her lover's ears.

 

A soft hand grips her ankle. Josie screams, a shiver through the pine walls, and does not turn back.

“Bent in circles, you clasped a power and used it”, her own backward voice whispers. “He is like you now.”

 

 

 

**2\. Hold II**

_Others still see you_

 

 

There is a cloud in his room.

 

Which is, in fairness, a marked improvement over the jungle of fog and vulgar neon outside, where the suburbs melt into highways and, further back, the sheer blackness of the night. The single window of his motel room splashes blues and purples on the wall, a hue of pink whenever the place's own insignia briefly wins its fights against the inevitability of entropy and flares up in a classless flash. Albert closes his eyes then, counts to twelve, knows the offending brightness will be gone by then, opens them again. He has considered fetching his Ray-Bans, but wearing sunglasses at night is a stylistic boundary he is not ready to cross.

He should be going to bed, anyway, as the hour grows late and a stiffness settles in his shoulders. The neons are getting to him. VACANCIES, the tallest one advertises, no specifics: a state of being. Perspective composes JUKEBOX BAD LUCK like a crossword, down and across, pick your poison, and on a intersection of the same _k_ : KISS, KISS, BANG, unadvisable under most circumstances. A car wash phone number under crass sexual offers, setting once and for all a fitting toilet stall mood for this cesspool. Then: HOLD YOUR BLOOD IT IS WRUNG. I THINK, BUT AT WHAT COST. A PROPHECY OF CHARCOAL.

LOOSE. LOSE LOVE.

 

Albert slams the window shut. In a fit of reticence – prim and prudish, he tells himself, and pusillanimous and preposterously paranoid, before running out of alliterations on the tip of his tongue – he moves to the desk and closes the folder with his case's files from under the abat-jour's malfunctioning light and its obscene morse blinking.

He sits on his bed enveloped by a faint smell of rust. It's all closing in. It's all closing in and there's a fucking cloud and no-one to be rational _at_ and he needs- he needs to be reminded that- he needs a voice. Pressing his forehead on one shaking hand, with the other he reaches for the phone. Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, he supposes, regardless of the hour, yet a wild round of secretary-wrangling nets him a new number for Truman's current whereabouts instead, a 'Bookhouse'. Sure. Wouldn't have pegged him for spectacularly literate, but whatever floats his boat.

 

The voice at the other end of the line must have been off the bottle for some time, but not a whole lot of it. His bewilderment as he puzzles out the caller's identity stings Albert's ears.

 

“Harry.”

“You here to gloat?”

“I stopped explaining my reasoning when they stopped grading me for it.”

Dull pause.

Get a grip, Truman, that comeback didn't take a degree to piece back together, and the only thing that prevents Albert from voicing that thought is the distinct feeling that it would, again, be wasted breath. Disappointing. Gloat? About what, indicting that namby-pamby wishy-washy cutthroat Truman called a girlfriend? Albert has come to him for honesty, a solid heart, and groundedness, and he was not expecting to be blamed for having solved an attempted murder nobody else ever gave a hoot for, not even the victim.

Sure, why don't you get yourselves killed, the lot of you. You've got not one but two big honking cliffs to play lemming with.

Fine.

Let's try again.

 

“This what it looks like? Gloating?”

“...I don't know.”

“Is this how you do it – trust first, doubt later? Pal, that's one backward-ass country tradition you've got going there.”

“Can it, Rosenfield.”

“You first, Truman.”

The good Sheriff's voice is predictably slurred, but it's the constant seed of blame and doubt that poisons it to Albert's ears. Can he really only afford to be a good man, a righteous man (the man Albert needed to talk to right now) when his life is split in neat, orderly blacks and whites? Albert wants to believe that he can hold him in a higher regard. Granted, his grief is still raw. How many days has it been since he left that shithole? It seems an eternity, locked up in here. Still. Can't people ever be cautious?

 

“You've never been here, have you. Like this.”

“Not personally, no.” No. No, as it were, he's never dated a murderer, thank you very much. More wasted breath this might be, but the words are pooling in his throat and you know what, Truman, “Because I do this human relationships thing in the right order, and I haven't yet had reason to take back my love and utmost trust, which for the record, if reading between the lines is a bit of a tall order at the moment, are one and the same, and-”

“...you think you're so high and mighty.”

“ _You_ ever thought I was gonna drop pursuing Coop's attempted murder, you got another thought coming and you better realize what could have happened and come to your senses real soon. I want to think it's the fresh wound yammering over there, Sheriff, and not your mouth, because that's been known for more sensible talk, surprisingly. Don't slip. You hear me? Don't slip.” Be the same dull, sturdy oak you've always been. Please? “We're fighting the same fight and by Hippocrates I am not leaving you-”

 

A spark of static cuts him off but does not cover a distant thumping on the other end, with a split-second delay from the same noise he is hearing from beyond his room's door. Again. Three long raps, a pause, short, long, long, pause and will you cease and desist already.

 

“Wait, I hear knocking. Could be Hawk.”

“On my end as well. Don't mind it. Don't open.”

“Albert.”

“Don't mind it. Do not open.” He does not hide the urgency in his voice.

“Albert, what on earth-”

“Take care, Harry. You're not alone.”

 

Albert yanks the phone's plug off with a string of curses, severing whatever connection was building up between his room and the other end of the state, forget words forget matter forget comfort, he cannot endanger anyone else and him least of all. Truman will pull through. He will. Before Albert can be back to check on Coop and him, he will. They've got each other, don't they, those two, a support.

_B_ _efore Albert can be back._ Intent, reaching out in smoke. The cloud grows. He thinks back to his assignment, to the thicket of squares and blue hexagons on the dossier – a civilized development compared to mission briefing through interpretive dance, thanks Gordon, keenly appreciated – he counts his memories of the petals of the attached blue rose. Things to do, before. Fog cannot cloud his judgement. He paces the room, lights himself a cigarette, a gray line rising up. The cloud grows.

 

On the low horizon of the huddled buildings outside, in bright light blue:

 

LEARN THE ACT, THAT EVERY BODY IS TOO FAR GONE.

 

 

**3\. Audacity of Retention**

_The cold gust followed_

 

 

If she stands very still, Ronette can hear a fluttering of wings.

“It's just the wind”, her mother says in the gentle voice she uses these days, and in the same way one could say that the forest is just trees.

 

Not that people should speak carelessly about trees, either.

 

Laura's grave is like a shore, coasted by the ebbing and flowing of the woods. Things end up there, abandoned by the tide, and on a good day, when she is strong enough and bold enough, Ronette goes there to stand watch. She is not smart enough to recognize the wings or to tell apart their intent by the air they leave behind (maybe they really are nothing more than the wind, which is to say, trees. It would explain the amount of pine needles), but they are there, day on and day off, circling over her friend's remains, which are the town whole. So she stands guard, there at a threshold, just this side of it, where the woods cannot eat her up and leave her spread in a tapestry of leaves. She stands guard and that's got to amount for something.

She keeps the place clean. One day it's buttons, beads. Shiny rocks, pantyhose, a charred stick, dead voles and mice. One remarkably soft, remarkably white feather in the muddy grass.

Today, it appears that the only thing the currents have left ashore is Sheriff Truman.

 

He drifts through the graves like a penitent man; powerful wings beat overhead. The Sheriff does not seem to mind. He does not seem to mind Ronette either, letting her fade into the background, as people are wont to do, and that is fine by her.

 

“Did you know Laura?”, he asks, eventually, cold hands in his pockets.

He takes his hat off as he approaches her tombstone and cocks his head as if puzzled by its inscription, and sure, 'we love you' is one weird epitaph, but there are many kinds of love, and the stone isn't wrong as far as Ronette is concerned. He looks frail, she thinks – 'did you know Laura' is a frail question for a lawman who has spent the past month digging up her life.

“No-one can say they knew Laura... I guess.”

“You know, it's the second time today that I have to ask this.”

Drained. That's what he is, frail and drained. Maybe he shouldn't be asking this question if it takes so much out of him?

“About Laura?”

“About people I thought I knew.”

Ronette gives him one of her smiles. _It's what people like us do,_ _man_ , she would add in a hazy voice, people who do not understand and take one step back after the other until they slip, but she regrets that thought, because he is the Sheriff, and the law is not for girls like her, and surely she is mistaken in daring to say 'us'.

 

“You often here?”

“I feel like I owe her.”

“You're a good kid.”

They stand there a while. It's okay. Laura does that to people.

 

“Pulaski. Janek! Your pops was a mill worker, wasn't he”, the Sheriff pipes up after a pause, holding onto the connection he has made all by himself, tying a small bit of his town together again.

There is a childish brilliance to his faint smile, but then again, people say the same about Ronette's, and his childhood was even further back along than hers, so who knows. Who knows.

“So was mine”, he says as she nods. “Mill kids through and through.”

“Last of our breed.”

“Haven't heard word of city council cancelling the Packard Timber Games yet”, he says, unwilling, it seems, to let go of what the fire took from them. “As long as the mill folks can hold onto that spirit, it won't be gone. They will rebuild.”

Or maybe the firs will get their wood back, take root in the cracks of melted iron, pine cones stacked in the trimmers and debarkers, waiting for the next fire. One body will be healing, either way. Ronette just can't bring herself to be sure that it is going to be the town's.

“Father never brought me along to see them.”

“Then don't bother going. You were too young to witness Ben Horne's majestic Sheaf Pitch blunder of '71, anyway, and nothing since has ever compared”, he says, and studies his audience. Having gathered that the combined mental image of the town's head creep, a bundle of pine boughs and impending disaster was enough to net him her undivided attention, he proceeds to reenact the tale, lest it be lost to the younger generations.

Ronette maintains her healthy dose of doubts about the accuracy of the bit with the family of hedgehogs, but she nonetheless appreciates the storytelling effort, and by the time the Sheriff gets to the fundamental role played by a young Catherine Martell's plaid kilt in that prickly disaster, she finds herself crying with laughter. It has been so long. Cocaine notwithstanding, even longer. _Can you see this, Laura?_ _Can you hear me over the wind?_

 

When the laughter has died and the Sheriff leaves down the narrow cemetery path, his shoulders are still slouched, his back still heavy, like an old dog unsure of the way home. He gave her his handkerchief to clean up her silly tears with, insisting that she keep it, and Ronette is grateful, because these days, every bit of white on her is safe, is a shield, and in this cold, windy March, her socks and jacket leave too much exposed.

But if this piece of cloth is protecting her now, then what is left for Sheriff Truman when the trees will close around him?

Ronette sits by Laura's grave and listens. The air is still.

 

 

 

**4\. Simple Talk**

_Days-old message, not past due_

 

 

A mug, in a sink. Water circles around this container and falls down the drain. What is left? A mound of wet coffee in the trash. If these are symbols, Margaret strains to tie them to the strands of the tapestry around her, the tangle of star-drawings and dew and leaf veins that trace more certain contours on a wavering world. What _is_ a used mug? An item that deserves more care that this temporary abandonment, Margaret notes with a grimace, considering the intensive use the poor thing is put through around these parts, but to limit her observation to that is to handle reality through a veil. What else, what is she missing. _Who_ is a used mug.

A connection will present itself; that, if nothing else, is certain, because there is a tension in the wood. Her log, sitting on a cutting board in the diminutive kitchen of the Sheriff's Department offices, remains silent as Margaret helps herself to the last sugar crumbles littering empty donut boxes. The secretary's mumbling from the nearby booth, a monotonous string of 'castling', ' _zugzwang_ _'_ and 'capture _en passant_ _'_ , lulls the building into the calm of night until the kid gets up and disappears in one of the rooms at the far end of the corridor.

 

Footsteps trace a tired course – heavy boots, heavy feet, a muttered “Oh, man...” to draw a line at the end of a day that has been much too long, man oh man – between the door and the couches by the entrance. (Who is dark, bitter and washed out? Surely the list is long.)

A curtain falls as the door clangs close. The kitchen light flickers and Margaret blinks as the incandescence is drained from the filament, down the wire and the exhaust tube. The room is dark and empty, all warmth has gone down the electric cables. There it is, she whispers, finding it hard to breathe. Not her connection, not yet, but the reason she wandered in here tonight. This darkness is not kind. Margaret shivers in her sweater.

 

She walks out, into the entrance hall, finding that the blackout has extended to the whole building: the light got out. There are times, in life, when such an event occurs, where the light gets out and all that remains is to keep one's balance, so _adagio_ , one step forward, she carries on. The footsteps from before mirror hers, moving from the couches to the middle of the hall.

“Who is there?”, Harry Truman asks.

Lucy Moran's voice does not carry over through the thick black air. It's just them. His footsteps have come close.

A thud and a yelp later, Margaret catches the faltering Sheriff in her arms, carries his weight, keeps him upright. It's one moment gripping cold coarse wool and flannel – then the man jolts back, rejecting her support as he curses the chunk of wood he's tripped over, but the image stays, in the darkness.

 

In this persistence, Margaret cradles the lonely boy she remembers from her youth. Or is he? Was this always the shape of his hands?

 

“This is not the reason why I am here”, she says, taking a cavalier step back herself.

“I'd hope so, Margaret.”

He sighs, the darkness sighs. Did it come with him? Sharp and cold like old losses settling in the bones until they break, growing denser, black smoke as vast as one person's life, not hers and it's just them, it's just them. Harry Truman's roots reach deep, don't they? They have always been visible to the naked eye. For how long has a storm been gathering?

And her log withholds all futures.

Margaret pats his shoulder. She keeps a grip on his jacket, counting the rings of wood underneath.

 

Her persistent image still holds him in an embrace and hears a sob. He is suffocating, but won't tell.

 

“What's the log's take on this? Jealous?”, he asks. His voice is low and humorless, meant to hold back, hold back, hold back from one love, all loves, which self-evidently happen to other people while the town's Sheriff is only good as a dried old stump, a fixed background, to use as seat, to cut, to burn.

“Tonight my log remains silent.”

 

The man she is holding is not Harry Truman at all. His face is hidden and shaped by harsher lines.

 

“Okay, then. If the log won't help, we'll just solve this ourselves.”

Is the man talking Harry Truman? She cannot tell, from beyond this thick dark curtain.

“It can't be too bad. Let me light a match and see where the problem is”, he adds, in Harry Truman's voice, with Harry Truman's ease whenever he can make himself useful and shake off for one moment the tired weight in his bones and, last but not least, demonstrating Harry Truman's characteristic lack of finesse when it comes to dabbling in symbols instead of facts.

“You will do no such thing.”

“I'm not going to set fire to it, Margaret, your log is-”

“Not the log.” She shakes her head. “ _It_.”

“What is _it_?”

“My log won't tell.”

 

But it would burn. You see, it would burn. A darkness that is not kind would burst in a nasty fire and they would be caught in the middle. Margaret Lanterman will not allow a flame to be lit in this convergence.

 

“So what would you suggest?”

“Go outside. I can only play my part. Can you see the clue? Can you feel the sadness? It suffocates in this closed-off place, as it suffocated the lights. Go outside and give it breath.”

“That's not how things work.”  
“Some do.”

“Listen – I'm going to walk toward the wall and follow it until the I hit the switchboard, ok? No need for lights. Then we'll all go home and forget about today. What were you doing here, anyway? Stay here, I'm going.”

And he does, because he has roots in this place, most of the time, and he knows his steps, most of the time. Harry Truman flips a switch and the darkness dissipates, scooped aside by the low humming lights of the station. Lucy's chirping can once again be heard from the interrogation room. Margaret breathes.

Yet because darkness came and her log has no insight to offer, a question remains. She came here for a reason. If the person we are in the dark is not the same as the one under the spotlight, which one do we want to follow?

“Go outside, find a stream. It is bigger than you.”

 

In the echo of their embrace, she is whispering the same words in his ear and he is not listening.

 

What does it mean to flip a switch?

 

“I'm _fine_ , Margaret.”

Sure. Then play the part. When non-electric morning will follow – a gathering, overcast. She holds onto her frown.

“My log says you are a fool and a liar, Harry Truman.”

 

 

 

**5\. The Music of Leave**

_Change. Go_

 

 

The warm buzz of TV is good company, when your standards get low enough. The words come from a world back there behind the screen, small and cozy, forcing everyone to stick close. Harry can see the announcer wink at him from the corner of the mirror, half-hidden by the thicket of potted plants still wrapped in Lucy's yellow ribbons.

From beyond that diminutive forest, the voice, jovial and assured, talks of heartthrob, which, as everyone knows, is the spark of that eternal fire that is love. The words seep through, settle in his lungs, drag them down and Harry grips the sink with both hands and shouts into it until he cannot feel his throat nor knuckles anymore. Nobody answers. Nobody is there.

To think that he put so much effort into putting himself back together.

 

“He ain't here”, the TV says. Feels right. He ain't here, he must be somewhere cozy running his hands along his girlfriend's hips, friends come afterwards if at all. And Josie ain't here either – she's dead, see, that's the problem, that she's dead and he'll never fix her. He misses her, he misses everyone, he misses how it used to be with Coop when he could show him around, between a cup of coffee and a stack of donuts, and dig deeper and deeper with the certainty that he could trust his town. (“That's impossible. Mister Cooper, you didn't know Laura Palmer.” You know what's eternal? All the bullshit that comes out of your mouth)

So here's the plan: he'll just wash his face and go back to bed, where the voices are muffled into a senseless drum, and let them tide him over until morning. It's nothing.

 

Whispering through the leaves, the voice in the TV lulls him with a secret recipe for happiness. It feels like he is missing key words, or are they in a foreign tongue – a code he was left out of. He should have never left for college, that had to be the moment everyone huddled together and made words and lives just for them. That had to be it.

 

“Be cold and tender, like meat.”

If he did that, if he could find out what it means and do it, would his people come back.

 

In the mirror, Harry sees a man who is lost. His code, his own foreign tongue, is written in the wrinkles of his face and wouldn't you know, it's such a simple language: all it says is he doesn't belong. Why'd he even try, Coop has blended better than he ever did.

 

“A word from our sponsors: for a limited offer, today only, fly away.”

 

The lights go out, again, what did Margaret say about that?, and he mutters that it must be his unlucky day, unlucky week, unlucky month or six entire months he would give back before realizing that he has just closed his eyes. But the TV still twinkles from the corner of the mirror, at the border of his view. Through the leaves, under his eyelids, the TV still plays.

 

“You can start again. How loud is the sea, where you live? Do waves exist?”

 

Is he supposed to answer? Yes, no, maybe. Waves brought Laura's body to the shore, didn't they? There are eddies in the lake waters, and a vortex here and now – Harry leans on the sink, blinks and hurries to close his eyes again. There was a man in the mirror. He is so tired. It's a blur and can't this television shut up, whose voice is this and what is it singing? It sounds like his own but what is it singing? There is a man in the mirror who is tired and makes a labored effort to raise an eyelid just as Harry opens his: in the mirror, the leaves are longer and the television reeks of static. Raising his hand to the reflection, he touches a face that is not his, with heavier bones, a wider nose, a deep-set frown. The reflection fades and there is buzzing under his skin.

 

“Remember, today only: fly away.”

 

Harry's scream dies in his mouth. He runs.

 

 

 

**coda: Principality of Fire**

_Give it one day_

 

 

When Dale finds him, in the wee hours of morning, he is parked under a street light on Cedar St., shivering, curled up in the driver's seat, doggedly staring at the gazebo in the park ahead.

 

Dale, for his part, is strolling through the cool night air, balancing a generous box of donuts in his arms. It's the first, still-warm batch of the day coming straight from the bakery, which isn't quite open yet but whose owners have learned that Dale Cooper's smile opens all doors. The delivery should make a nice surprise for Annie, asleep in his bed back at the Great Northern, and get her in top form for the pageant. Any challenge can be faced on a full stomach and there is, after all, nothing better than a stack of donuts to feel one with the deepest virtues of this fine town.

 

He trots to the car as soon as he recognizes it, waves and knocks at the window, with a jolly whistle to underline the unexpected meeting. Harry does not even turn his head to look at him. When a patch of red flannel catches Dale's eyes instead of the Sheriff's usual shirt, he unceremoniously opens the car door and lets himself in, donuts and all.

 

Harry is sweating cold in his pajamas, white knuckles curled around the wheel, and Dale doesn't know what's wrong but he can be there with him until it gets better. He can gallantly offer him a donut, he can talk about any odd thing – did Harry know that the most commonly herded animal in Tibet is the yak, whose English name is in fact a loanword from the Tibetan language, but unlike the locals, and arguably due to a paucity of yaks in English-speaking regions, our language fails to differentiate between the male and the female yak? The evolution of language is a constant exchange, Harry, isn't it amazing – though not unlike with other kinds of exchange, the languages which hold the most power should take care to be fair in their mingling. Everyone should take care to be fair, really. Donut?

 

“Thanks”, Harry says at some point, and refuses to elaborate. Lip reading points toward 'didn't think you'd stay', but in fairness it's dark, they are tired and Dale could be imagining things.

 

Sunrise catches up with them, finding them silent in their little closed-off world. They split the last donut, unsure of who had cheated their rigorous sharing order, and toast with its halves, dusting the seats with powdered sugar.

 

It's getting warm. “I'm your friend always”, Harry mumbles before falling asleep on his shoulder. The last thing he sees is his solid, still reflection in the car's side mirror.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! Happy hype for the third season! Happy 'let's pretend that late season 2 explored the consequences of the drama it unloads on its co-protagonist and didn't use him as a pretty piece of furniture from ep.18 onwards'!
> 
> And speaking of the third season - this fic was born from an attempt to tap into the most Lynchian of creepy plot devices, his beloved psychogenic fugue which is ever so applicable to the mess that is post-Josie Harry, but it does end up doubling as good wishes in Forster's general direction. Here's hoping!
> 
> EDIT 7/7/2017: added an illustration for the second part gifted by my beloved [skull-the-kid](http://skull-the-kid.deviantart.com/), you can find it [here](http://skull-the-kid.deviantart.com/art/The-transparency-of-bark-687154301) on dA! Isn't it the coolest B)


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